She was supposed to have time.
Time measured in small, ordinary miracles—one more game with her teammates, one more class where her notebook filled with careful dreams, one more dance beneath stadium lights where the future still felt wide open. At twenty, life should have been accelerating, not narrowing. And yet, instead of planning seasons and semesters, she found herself staring straight at cancer and daring it to take everything from her.
Those who loved her watched in quiet awe as she walked into chemotherapy with the same steady resolve she once carried into practice. No dramatics. No surrender. Just Kate, shoulders squared, choosing to show up again and again. Her friends learned that courage doesn’t always roar; sometimes it smiles, sometimes it cracks a joke, sometimes it shows up on time even when the body is exhausted. Her twin—who called her “my person” as naturally as breathing—was suddenly faced with the unthinkable task of learning how to breathe in a world where half of her heart was fighting for every moment.
Kate did not “win” in the way the world likes to count victories. There were no triumphant headlines, no neat ending wrapped in relief. But she never lost herself, not for a single day. Between hospital rooms and lecture halls, IV poles and textbooks, she kept choosing connection. She checked on classmates when she was the one in pain. She sent encouraging texts to teammates when her own strength was thin. On days when words felt too heavy, she let her smile speak—soft, genuine, unmistakably hers.
She didn’t pretend the fear wasn’t there. She didn’t deny the anger or the grief of a life interrupted. She carried those feelings openly, alongside her faith, her hope, and her determination not to let illness be the only chapter people remembered. Cancer was something happening to her, not something that defined her. She remained a student, a teammate, a sister, a daughter, a friend. She remained Kate.
After she was gone, a different kind of silence settled in—a silence heavy with absence but alive with memory. What endures is not just the loss, but the way she moved through her hardest days: stubbornly kind, fiercely present, endlessly thoughtful of others. She still dreamed of the patients she hoped to one day comfort, even as she became the one teaching everyone around her what compassion under pressure truly looks like.
Her family, her twin, her team now carry an ache that never fully loosens its grip. But it is an ache braided with pride. Because when everything else was stripped away—plans, timelines, certainty—Kate Kaufling’s courage remained. And it remains still, a quiet, unwavering light, continuing to glow in the dark places she left behind.
